Don’t forget our missing children

While the case of Madeleine McCann remains in the spotlight, many others around Europe have been forgotten by the public — along with 82 who disappeared in Ireland, writes Dan Buckley.

WHEN Robert Holohan went missing from his home near Midleton more than two years ago, every mother and father, in the country could feel his parents’ pain.

Without prompting, hundreds of ordinary people descended on east Cork and scraped the ground on their hands and knees to try to find the 11-year-old boy. The search ended in heartache when his charred body was recovered, and neighbour Wayne O’Donoghue was subsequently convicted of his manslaughter.

The tragedy highlighted was the willingness of complete strangers to empathise with a missing child and his or her loved ones. A missing adult is one thing; a missing child quite another.

It is as if the child’s absence and all that it entails brings out the best and worst in the rest of us — our best endeavours to trace them and our worst fears that the child will never be found and that we are lost ourselves.

Speaking last January after Robert’s second anniversary Mass, his mother Majella spoke of the enduring heartache for her family.

“Losing a child is the toughest thing that any parent could go through,” she said. “I don’t think we will ever get over it.”

It is for that reason that the parents of Madeleine McCann are trying everything humanly possible to try and trace their daughter. Last week, they secured the assistance of the Pope, meeting him in Rome and thereby keeping the search for their daughter in the public consciousness.

The phenomenon of missing children affects many people apart from the immediate family. It impacts on a wide range of people who know the child, from their friends and teachers to the gardaí and other non-governmental agencies involved in the search.

While the case of four-year-old Madeleine remains very much in the media spotlight, the stories of hundreds of missing children — 82 of whom were last seen here in Ireland — are forgotten by all but their families.

Here are just a few cases where the spotlight has all but faded:

* Michael Doyle, also known as Michael Lyons, was two when he went missing from Tullow, Co Carlow, on July 13, 2004. At the time, information suggested he might be in Britain travelling in a dark coloured van.

* Congo-born Jennifer Anne Bena Princess has not been seen since December 3, 2004. She is now aged eight. She may be in Britain after going missing from Tralee in Co Kerry.

* Joshua Lee O’Sullivan was last seen on April 26, 2004. He was seven months old. At the time he was with his father in Naples, Italy, and his extended Romanian family in a gypsy camp.

* Six-year-old John Ogbeide, a native of Sierra Leone, is missing from Palmerstown, Dublin, since March 10, 2004.

* Joey-Ray Diedrich was 11 months old when he disappeared without a trace on October 10, 2006, from Saint Sulpice, France. It is believed he may be in Europe.

* Ilina Allouch was abducted by her father, Ibrahim Allouch, in November 2002. She may have been taken to Lebanon from Germany.

* Brown-eyed Souria Boukatouh was last seen in June 2001. The six-year-old was possibly taken to Algeria.

* Enrico Bertram Allesandro Korte was nine when he was abducted by his mother on 26 July, 2001, and taken to Sudan.

* Nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin disappeared on 10 January, 2003. She has green eyes and brown hair.

* Jasmin El Bakhti was three years old when she was abducted from Germany and taken to Morocco in May 2000.

* Rachel Ashley Böhm was born on September 25, 1986. On November 30, 1993, she was abducted from Germany by her mother and brought to the US.

* After visiting her mother in Italy, five-year-old Luna Maria Celeste Tinnemann was due home to her father in Germany on April 20, 2006. Her father has never heard from his daughter or the mother since.

* Slav Kamburova was born in 1993. The young Polish boy was abducted on November 4, 1999, and supposedly taken to Lebanon.

* René Neli was abducted by his father from Germany and taken to Poland or Turkey in February 2004.

* Brown-eyed Francesco Guarrera was abducted in 1997 from Germany and brought to Poland.

* For more information and photos of missing children, see the Irish missing children’s website www.missingkids.ie, the European Committee for Missing Children at www.kinder-nach-hause.de or Child Focus at www.childfocus.org.